For the record: The PMO responds to say that this post is "ridiculously inaccurate" and that Byrne is not involved in the budget roll-out. I'm waiting for a little further clarification. So take this with a grain of salt until further notice:

This morning's headlines were filled with reports from the Parliamentary Budget Officer and private sector forecaster Global Insight that Canada was about to go into deficit to the tune of $13 billion even before spending a penny on fiscal stimulus.

Over the next five years, these reports said, Canada would rack up more than $100 billion in deficits -- nearly wiping out the $105 billion that's been paid down on our national debt over the last decade.

Seeing these kind of headlines was, I'm told, a bit unsettling for Jenni Byrne, one of Harper's most powerful advisors. She is in charge of "Issues Management" at the PMO. In other words, if there's an issue, it's her job to manage it to the benefit of her boss. Byrne hosts a daily conference call at the crack of dawn with communications aides from each cabinet ministers office and, though I I've never been on the call, I'm told she's not shy about letting people know when she thinks they've screwed up and let an issue get "unmanaged".

Now no one in her government was responsible for the unsettling deficit projections in the day's papers but she decided to get ahead of the game with what, as BMO Capital Markets economist Doug Porter described it when we talked to him today, might be a great public relations move to get the bad news about the budget out of the way today. Rather than have post-budget headlines filled with "OTTAWA SPILLS GALLONS OF RED INK", she could release the deficit numbers now, get that headline out of the way and then, next week, the post-budget headlines might read "OTTAWA SAVES ECONOMY WITH BILLIONS IN SPENDING".

And so, Byrne dispatched the PMO's communications staff to convene a not-for-attribution briefing with Hill reporters -- these happen relatively frequently for a variety of reasons -- to make sure the deficit news was spinning her way.

Now, normally, the announcement of a key financial benchmark such as the size of the government's deficit is made by the finance minister speaking on the record after handing out substantial financial documentation to those in the room and publishing it online so that all Canadians can see what's going on.

But for this announcement, the revelation of the size of the deficit was made by communications staff from the Prime Minister's Office in a briefing for Parliament Hill reporters. Reporters -- and only one reporter from each news organization is allowed in to these things -- are allowed to participate on the condition that the PMO officials may not be quoted by name. There were no elected officials at the briefing.

Moreoever, no news organization was told ahead of time about the subject of the extraordinary off-the-record briefing. That's important because had news organizations known that it was going to be about the budget, presumably they'd have assigned their economics reporters. On other days, these briefings could be mostly about foreign affairs and then you'd want your foreign affairs specialist present. Normally, advisories are sent out a few days ahead of time to media organizations across the country and around the world when the governnment is about to unveil such an important financial benchmark.

Scott Brison, a former federal cabinet minister and the Liberal party's finance critic, said the fact that PMO officials unveiled this figure in this way is a demonstration that Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is not calling the shots on this budget.

"It's pretty clear that it's the PMO that's running the budget," said Brison. "There's a real issue here that they're undermining [the] finance [department]. Who's the finance minister? Is it Jim Flaherty or Stephen Harper? Jim Flaherty's got the title. Harper should give him the job."

Byrne, though, is betting that all this stuff about who releases what numbers when is too much "inside baseball" for most of Canada to care about. All she wants is a headline next Wednesday that doesn't mention deficits and only mentions spending. We'll see what happens next week.;